Thank you, Jennifer! We are also studying how serving as mentors for high school students affects the engineering identity of undergraduates from underrepresented groups. That work is largely based on interviews with the mentors  - we hope to submit the paper in the near future. I very much believe in "if they can see us they can be us" (a variant of the role model hypothesis). I also think that being a role model and doing outreach is motivating for the facilitators, but there is much less literature on how "near-peer mentoring" affects mentors. I'm excited you are looking into it!   In short, we used a mixed-methods approach with 1) pre/post surveys and 2) qualitative analysis of pre-and post-camp one-on-one interviews. @Joni Lakin can add more detail on the methods, she'll be presenting  at ASEE this summer.  Our current efforts are based on work we did looking at the effects of framing engineering as altruism in 1st year engineering programs. You can find those publications on my Google Scholar page or I can email them if you are interested.  

Thanks again for starting us off with a great comment!

Virginia covered all the main points. We used interviews mainly to talk about identity in terms of their future selves and career goals. In addition, we used goal congruency theory ideas to look at how students' perceptions of engineering (i.e., is it prosocial?) would interact with their own values to make them feel interested or confident about being an engineer.

The role of the mentors was positive for the mentors, too. Dr. Leonard Taylor at AU did interviews with them about their experiences and their own engineering identity was strengthened by the experience.

I'm not sure if the video changed my perception of engineering specifically, but rather how students may engage in and/or take advantage of an engineering program. Would love to know more about the engineering courses/classes the students were involved in. 

The undergraduate students were in the "normal" undergraduate classes based on their engineering major. They were all also involved in Auburn's Academic Excellence program for minority engineers http://www.eng.auburn.edu/admin/aep/index.html and/or  Cupola Engineering Ambassadors program. Both these programs provide students with training and experience serving as role models. The two students featured in the video are also from the same geographical area as the high school student cohort. 

We talk about "framing" a lot, meaning that engineering can be presented in many ways--a way to get a secure job, a way to help others, a way to use your math and science skills. Our hypothesis was that framing engineering as a pro-social or altruistic career field would increase students' interest in engineering if they held pro-social values or career goals. Basically, none of those framings are wrong, but we thought that highlighting the way that engineers affect everyday lives, helps people around the world, and/or work collaboratively would make the field more attractive to a broader range of students.

 

Like you, we also found the benefits to the mentors was at least as powerful as the benefits to the mentees. Thanks for the question! 

We were interested mainly in short-term indicators--perceptions of engineering (i.e., how much it meets individual or communal goals) as well as interest in and self-efficacy for learning more about engineering. The most interesting finding that might warrant longitudinal follow up is their definitions of engineering. The students were really moved by the scope of engineering. For example, one student said "[engineering] could be anything, anything in the world". Not every student said they were interested in engineering for their own career, but almost every one said something like that about how their appreciation of engineering grew. I would be curious how that excitement might shape their interest over time--seeking out engineering videos or other camps. It would probably take more than one summer camp to change a student's career pathway if they weren't interested in engineering at all. But many students connected their prior interests to engineering (e.g., a student who was thinking about medical school started thinking about biomedical engineering).

COVID messed with our plans (like everyone!) but we had planned to bring them back for different STEM camps in year 2 and we have a handful that are coming this summer, so we are excited to talk with them again and see how those initial impressions have held up over time. Thanks for the question!

This NSF RFE grant challenged my Computer Science and Software Engineering students to develop innovative K12 educational Robotics, Apps, IOT, VR/AR applications introducing the National Grand Challenges for Engineering. Evaluations clearly showed how excited students were to discover the magic of computing applications. In Spring 2021, we were even able to teach our curriculum in virtual mod, due to COVID!  There work was already presented at 2 national and international conference and it will be presented this summer at another international conference. 
 

Great questions! In 2019-2020, following the camp we had a weekend event in the community where the students were from. We talked to parents about engineering in general and the summer camps available. The students went to different "stations" where the mentors were showing different kinds of engineering topics or technology. Later that semester, we brought all the students to our campus (about 2 hours away) for Engineering Day (an annual event for HS students from across the state) where they participated in the open house activities for the different majors and had lunch with a program specifically for underrepresented groups in engineering.

One thing to note was our mentors were engineering majors and mostly from the region where the students were from. During camp, they were both in the labs with students during the day and also the counselors who stayed in the dorms with the students, so they spent A LOT of quality time together. One thing that didn't really work (and I'd LOVE some ideas here) was keeping them in informal connection during the school year. At the end of camp, we asked students which mentors they would most like to stay in touch with, but when we tried to use GroupMe and other informal communication channels, it was dead air. We didn't want to hold many formal events to bring them together, because our mentors were all really involved and busy students, but the open-ended invitation to connect wasn't effective.

Our goal was to have regular academic year communication between the facilitators and students using a monitored GroupMe. However, after several logistical hiccups we found out the students just weren't that interested. We are encouraged by follow-up participation by the students at the two academic year events. We also have a number of the 2019 cohort returning to attend other Auburn Summer Camps in 2021 where we will incorporate the idea of engineering as altruism into other programs.

 

I do love your video. I like the idea of the Global Engineer. I think it is helpful for students to see that while they can have different classes or teachers, many fields fit together.

Oh yes, we did and we had some good conversations, but we did that after the summer camp and before the academic year events. We weren't able to get any clear ideas of why the informal methods didn't work. I think in the future, we might start those channels DURING the camp so there's not a long gap before they are using it (and no one will feel like they have to break the ice)

I loved that too! It was really great to hear  two of the mentors talk about the camp in their own words.

I think the "framing" part is pretty easy to adopt. If you're doing an engineering challenge, give it a real world context that shows how the designed solution helps others or solves a real problem. The Grand Challenges of Engineering are highly motivating to students as are the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Challenges or lessons aligned to any of those ideas would demonstrate how engineering solves important challenges.

I think local connections for challenges may be especially valuable for students. We haven't really explored whether global (distant) challenges are as effective as challenges connected to students own communities, but I really think the latter is what may engage students' interest long-term. In 2019, we did a unit about urban infrastructure and tied it to an Amazon distribution plant that was just announced in the students' hometown. I think that was more cognitively engaging and meaningful than if it had been hypothetical infrastructure.

Jennifer

Thanks for your interest. I just watched your video and loved it. Part of Tomorrow's Community Innovators also has included App Development and Robotics led by Dr. Mardghitu and her students. 

I'm attaching the hyperlinks below in case others are interested.  If there are any you can't access please let me know. Some of the articles relate to freshmen some to middle/high school students and some to both. 

Our NanoHub pages from looking at freshman and nanotechnology solutions to grand challenges NSF NUE # 1446060 contain teaching and evaluation materials. The activities are readily adaptable for freshmen classrooms, outreach camps and open house events.  https://nanohub.org/members/145840/contributions

Introducing Engineering as an Altruistic STEM Career Breadcrumb J Lakin, D Marghitu, V Davis, E Davis - The Science Teacher, 2021   Am I an engineer yet? Perceptions of engineering and identity among first year students JM Lakin, AH Wittig, EW Davis, VA Davis - European Journal of Engineering Education, 2020   Work in Progress: Framing Engineering as Community Activism for Values-Driven Engineering V Davis, J Lakin, D Marghitu, E Davis - ASEE Southeast Regional Conference, 2020     Predicting intent to persist from career values and alignment for women and underrepresented minority students JM Lakin, VA Davis, EW Davis - The International journal of engineering education, 2019   Promoting Engineering Persistence Among Women through Alignment of Occupational Values and Perceptions of the Field JM Lakin, EW Davis, VA Davis - American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) …, 2016  

 My scholar page is https://tinyurl.com/545dk346 and my email is davisva@auburn.edu. 

Thank you very much for this compliment!